I used to listen to a very good hip-hop radio show in the late 1980s, so I know something about the music (at least of that era). And my work often involves me in academic discussions of the music and the culture. (Yes, hip-hop has made it into academia.) But if I want to listen to music that really moves me, I listen to the blues. For me, there's just no topping Son House, Robert Johnson, Johnny Shines, Robert Lockwood, Muddy Waters, or Elmore James. And on the harmonica, the one, the only, Sonny Boy Williamson (II). In my younger days I was able to catch some of the postwar Chicago greats in clubs before they died. The blues is the real black music as far as I'm concerned.